Spotify appears to be on its way towards its first physical products, Uber Canada drops a new feature that will force Canadian drivers to take a break, and Intel rolls out its latest Spectre fix.

From Reddit – It looks like Spotify is gearing up for its first line of physical products according to a job listing found by the Guardian. Apparently there are three job postings for an operations manager, senior product manager: hardware production, and project manager: hardware production and engineering, and one post even says that ‘Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products’. While we don’t know if this means we’ll be seeing a Spotify smart speaker or iPod Nano-type device, we’ll definitely have to keep our eye out for any future Spotify moves.

From Google Trends – Uber Canada is taking a stance on drivers that are working for too long. The new feature, which Uber Canada GM Rob Khazzam called ‘common sense’, will force Uber drivers trying to work more than 12 hours straight to take a six-hour break before they can work again. This is being done in order to curb driver drowsiness and to make the platform safer, and will be enforced through the Uber app, which will block drivers from accepting customers if they pass the 12 hour limit. Uber is certainly focusing more on driver safety – in 2017 it began giving drivers access to data about their speeding and breaking habits, Khazzam said that people should expect more from Uber on this front.

And from Google Trends once more – Intel is rolling out another patch in order to address Spectre that will cover the company’s sixth, seventh, and eighth-generation Intel Core product lines. Updates for the X-series processor family and its Xeon Scalable and Intel Xeon D processors for the data centre are also included in this patch. This update replaces a recent patch that Intel had to tell users to stop deploying because it sometimes caused computers to spontaneously reboot. According to Intel, this patch has been extensively tested and will be issued through OEM firmware pushes. This update for Spectre comes nearly two months after the CPU flaw was revealed publically, and nearly nine months since it was first reported to Intel.

That’s what’s trending today. Hashtag Trending is produced by IT World Canada. Today’s episode is brought to you by SAS, the world leader in advanced analytics and Official Analytics Partner of the Canadian Olympic Team.